


Prisoners

by foolondahill17



Category: The Sandbaggers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 05:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11201877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolondahill17/pseuds/foolondahill17
Summary: “Only she would ever truly know the irony of their situation: the KGB planning a joint operation with the SIS, contemplating sex and trust in a hotel room, preparing to face death in the dark.” “A Feasible Solution” from the perspective of Jill Ferris, the KGB agent sent to intercept Willie’s operation in Cyprus





	Prisoners

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Daniel Silva’s line in The Unlikely Spy, “Why did it take circumstances like these for her finally to be with a man like him?”, and another line from fanwork “Operational Necessity” by Circadienne, which you can find on this site (and should), “He screwed like he worked: patient and thorough, with a sort of resigned wit about the particulars that had her first giggling and then moaning.” 
> 
> Most of the dialog is transcribed word-for-word from the episode, barring a few extra scenes of my own invention.

Her name was Jillian Ferris. Jillian Ferris, called Jill. Jill Ferris. She repeated the name to herself until it became as familiar to her as the one given to her at birth. She became Jill Ferris and her previous identity dissolved into her past, to be picked up again after she secured the success of the operation. 

Jill Ferris. Her name was Jill Ferris. She was twenty-seven years old this past March twenty-first. Just out of SIS field school with a concentration in analysis and linguistics pertaining to Southern Europe. Done courses in tactical field training, basic marksmanship, and code work, all fitted for a station appointment. She also spoke Russian, a choice now common at the school. 

Jill Ferris. Her name was Jill Ferris. 

The airport was a whirlwind: bustling flight attendants and airport employees, patrons arriving and departing for their flights, ferrying luggage and a few small children. Jill searched the clogged hallway for the familiar dark head of William Caine, Head of Special Section, called Sandbagger One, called Willie, supposed to be the best. She thought it was him ahead of her, back turned as he bent over his bag. 

“Willie Caine?” 

He turned at the sound of his name and faced her, a fit man with a square, wary face. She saw his eyes rove over her body, only a flicker, but she knew he’d already sized up her strengths and weaknesses and breasts. He was subtle. Looked casual to anyone who didn’t know what to look for in an operations man, stiff shoulders, neck held a bit too erect, eyes that never stopped looking. 

“Jill Ferris,” she said and set her bag on the floor against her leg to free her hand for a handshake. His grip was sturdy and concise. 

“I was getting worried about you.”

“Sorry, there was a snag on my passport.” Jill smiled. Friendly. She was good at reading people and Caine seemed the kind of man to respond well to friendly. 

“Been abroad before, have you?” said Caine. 

“Once or twice.”

“Well at least you recognized me.” The panic in her chest was fleeting, but it was there in a brief glimpse at an alternative where he failed to recognize a Jill Ferris who was wearing a different face then the Jill Ferris he’d been told to look for. 

Ever since Grishina, KGB Head of Executive Action Section, had been found on his front stoop by a delivery boy, bullet in the head, Jill’s case workers had been waiting with bated breath for an opportunity to move in Cyprus. Sick of waiting, they invented opportunity themselves and had Charles Norridge, SIS Station Number Two, killed and framed the Greek Cyprian National Front, then sailed smoothly onto the Island under SIS cover. Nearly too smoothly, in fact. No one had expected London to choose a young woman to replace Norridge – Jill’s appointment for the job had been rushed and she was on the lookout for any sloppiness in the arrangement.

“Your photo’s on file at the school,” she answered Caine easily. If there was anything worse than a preparatory error, then it was indecision on the part of the operative. 

“Mmm.” He sounded unimpressed. Jill reminded herself that she was playing the part of an inexperienced field agent. It was only natural he shouldn’t be pleased to be saddled with her. He didn’t have time to be her nursemaid. He was probably just worried she’d make a mistake and get him killed. “I’ll have aged a lot since then.” 

He stuck his hand out, palm pointing straight across the hall, to indicate she should lead the way out. 

Right. She shouldered her case and walked, keenly aware of his eyes searching for any error, as he fell into step behind her.

* * *

They took a cab from the airport, luggage in the boot and Caine sitting in the backseat beside her. A semi-arid climate, Cyprus was now at the end of their very long, dry summer which would soon bypass Autumn and become a slightly milder winter. Dust hung over the city like mist, sunlight beating off the individual particles in a kaleidoscope of colors. Caine’s eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark glasses. 

“Where you from?” Caine broke the silence. The driver deftly navigated the narrow streets lined with shop fronts and venders. A popular tourist location even in the current politically charged climate, visitors wearing garish clothes, straw hats, and camera cases around their necks mulled over the stalls. 

“Surrey,” Jill answered. Born in Surrey. Schooled in Sussex. Parents still alive and at the old house. Younger sister at university. But she didn’t offer any more information because there was no need to prove she was Jill Ferris if Caine already believed that was who she was. “You?” 

“Salisbury,” Caine answered. 

Jill craned her neck to look through the front window into the side mirror at the line of cars behind them. The windows were open, circulating warm air through the car. She took the opportunity to throw another look at Caine without him noticing her. She could see part of his face in the mirror. She sketched the lines of his face into her memory. He had the kind of mouth that she imagined was no stranger to laughter. Caine was obviously a man who made an effort to like most people he met. Occasionally his gruffness toward her would slip away, leaving a warm and companionable interior. Perhaps he had to keep reminding himself not to let his guard down in front of her. 

“How’d you get into the service, Jill?” he asked. 

The driver swerved to avoid a vendor whose stall stood halfway on the pavement, and stuck his head out the window to shout at him, completely unconcerned with Jill and Caine in the backseat. 

“The usual story,” said Jill. “Spotted in university.”

“Old professor?” Caine guessed with a grin. 

“Right,” Jill answered. “What about you?”

“Came out of the RAF.” Jill had memorized his file en route. Caine belonged to old British Intelligence. From the height of the Cold War. Some said archaic now. Recently there’d been a shift to avoid personnel with military backgrounds and bring recruits in right to the school, better to bring them up close to home. Fostered more pliable minds, surer allegiances, and strict adherence to modus operandi. The KGB had been doing the same for years now, stemmed from Stalin’s notorious distrust of the military. 

“So, how do you like it so far?” Willie waved his hand vaguely to indicate the city outside the car. “New home and all.”

Jill shrugged. “I suppose I’ll get used to it.”

Caine nodded. “Leaving anyone behind? Family? Any boyfriend?” 

Jill could not tell whether or not Caine was just making casual conversation or if he was, as the English said, making a pass at her. Jillian Ferris, she decided, would not be opposed to the latter. Willie Caine was not an unattractive man. 

The KGB didn’t waste resources going after individual agents unless there was a definite possibility of getting them to turn. There had never been that sort of conjecture about Caine; nonetheless, there wasn’t any harm in trying. After all, SIS help with the operational heavy-lifting, not to mention establishing her in a station position, were not the only potential advantages of this operation. 

“Parents and a younger sister,” she replied. “No boyfriend. Difficult to maintain a relationship in this line of work, isn’t it?”

Caine shook his head. “Wouldn’t I know it.”

“Um, Willie,” Jill changed subjects, looking over her shoulder to the road behind them. “I hadn’t wanted to say anything in case I was wrong, but that car behind us has been on our tail for the past several turns.” 

“Yes,” said Caine. “We picked him up right out of the airport.”

Jill raised her eyebrows at Caine but he didn’t look back as she had done. Well, he wasn’t considered the best for nothing. She should feel privileged just for getting to work with him. 

“We going to do anything about it?”

“No,” said Caine. “They’d be mad to try anything with this many people around. As long as we stay in crowds we’ll be safe. And just maybe they’ll give us a clue about who the real bastards are.”

* * *

The car Hugh Douglas, Head of Station, got for them belonged to Charles Norridge, the dead Station Number Two. Norridge’s wife was under sedation. Jill didn’t think she could ever be the type of woman to need sedation if her husband was killed. 

The car jostled and bumped beneath Jill on its way over the uneven mountain roads. Caine did his best to steer around the worst of the potholes. They had decided retracing Colby’s steps was the best course of action while they waited for any leads to be turned over by the police. 

The British were flying nearly blind in this operation. They had not even yet confirmed that the National Front was, indeed, behind Colby and Yegorov’s kidnapping. Just as they were also still ignorant of the fact that “seduction” was a more apt word in Yegorov’s case. 

Jill squinted in the sunlight. In the rush from Moscow she’d paid little mind to packing sunglasses. She hadn’t even bothered to unpack at the hotel. She felt more comfortable living out of a bag, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. 

When she joined Caine in his room to discuss their course of action, she’d found one of the two beds in his room littered with the contents of his bag: slightly rumpled but sorted shirts and slacks, a shaving kit, and several fastened dossiers he’d checked out of London. One could learn a lot about someone from the way they packed a suitcase. Caine’s possessions confirmed what she’d already observed about his character: nonchalant, minimalist, and not overly preoccupied with looking spiffy on an op. 

They’d left soon after the impromptu introduction to Douglas. Jill was unimpressed with the Head of Station, a short man with thinning ginger hair and a weak handshake. His insistence that she call him Hugh confirmed that English pecking order had been infected by American familiarity. Wouldn’t catch a Soviet superior getting friendly with his subordinates. 

Caine was silent behind the wheel, mind on the car that had been tailing them ever since they left the shelter of the city. 

Jill looked in the rearview mirror. “He’s closing up.” 

“Right,” said Willie. His eyes darted behind his shades to glance in the mirror, as well. 

Caine looked grim. “If it does come to a shootout, I want one of them alive.”

“And both of us,” Jill said. 

She was already moving to draw her gun, a 38 Smith and Wesson – the field school’s latest obsession. Guns came in trends even in the UK. She tested it in her hand, feeling its sleek weight against her palm. Good fit. She touched the tip of her finger a hair’s-width against the trigger. _I don’t like guns_ Caine had said back in the hotel. She hoped to God that it wouldn’t affect his ability to use one capably in a fight. She wondered what about them made him uneasy. She’d always been attracted to guns with a fascination bordering on awe, intrigued by the sense of power they gave her at a touch. 

Caine only nodded. “Remember it.” 

_You just concentrate on staying alive_ his voice echoed in Jill’s head. He was obviously just as mistrustful of her abilities as she was of his. 

Around them was dust and rocky terrain. Patchwork shrubbery and brittle trees climbed the rough cliffs. They would give sparse cover, provided Caine and she could get out of the car safely and up to high ground. They crested a hill and a red sedan blocking the road ahead of them came into view. 

Jill looked behind them: the tailing car had disappeared. She could see Caine had noticed, as well. There was no need for words. Their actions were seamless and simultaneous as Caine yanked the car to a stop and the two of them dived out. 

Jill hit the dry ground hard, raising a cloud of dust around her. She gripped her gun at the ready and rolled onto her elbows. She scanned the barren landscape for any sign of ambush, a darting shadow behind a rock or a glint of a rifle in the sun. All she could hear was crickets chirping in the withered grass and her own breathing, slow and steady. Caine’s door shut. She heard his shoes crunch on the road as he crouched by the bumper. Around them was the distinct, claustrophobic feeling of being watched. 

She looked over her shoulder at Caine for direction. She was new at this, she reminded herself. Caine pointed first at his chest and then to her, then indicated he would go around the car and she would take his place behind the bumper. She nodded tersely and rose to her haunches. As soon as Caine took off she darted behind the car. She peered around the car, watching him dash for the red sedan. She held her revolver at eyelevel, watching the cliffs around them for any movement. Caine rolled over the hood of the car and was lost from her line of sight.

A gunshot shattered the silence and reverberated off the rocks. The bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the side of the red car, splintering flakes of paint into Caine’s face. It took Jill a moment to pinpoint the direction of the sound but then she saw the shooter camouflaged among the gray rocks of the overlooking hillside. Caine was already moving for better cover, firing two shots in quick procession. Jill was moving too, trying to get a better look at the man on the hill. She braced her elbows on the hood of the car and fired. The man fell. She heard his body rustle against the dry grass beneath him. 

Caine nodded for her to join him. A bullet ripped through the ground at her feet. She spun into cover behind a tree and looked over her shoulder. They were using sniping rifles. It would take them time to reset the gun. Jill spotted another one running: a man with a mane of dark ringlets. She licked her lips. She could get a shot off if only she could get to a better position. 

She circled back and joined Caine behind the red car. She got on the ground behind him, lying on her side and trying to catch her breath. Although she was not particularly exhausted, the exhilaration of being shot at was making her heart race. 

“We could use that rifle up there,” said Caine. His voice was as level as the hands he used to grip his gun. 

“Okay.” _Say no more, captain._ Jill was off again immediately, dodging behind rocks and trees, running close to the ground, as Caine fired cover shots to distract the men. There were at least two left. 

Her calves tugged as she climbed the hill. When she reached the dead man, older with silvering hair, she bent down to retrieve the rifle still curled in his hand. She heard a footstep on the dry grass behind her. She straightened up and started back down the hill, saw a shadow move toward her in the corner of her eye and, before her attacker could react, the side of her newly acquired rifle collided with his chest. He doubled over and she smashed the rifle into his face. His knife flew from his fist. He collapsed and rolled down the hill. She checked his pulse in his neck before returning to Caine. 

Caine and the man with the bushy hair were trading potshots across the road. 

“Got you a live one,” she said when she joined Caine behind the side of the sedan. The metal was hot from the sun. She was drenched in sweat. 

Caine looked at her in some surprise, “You sure he’s out of action?”

“Sure.” Jill tried not to sound too indignant. “How many?” 

“One, I think. With a rifle up there.” 

“Keys aren’t in this thing, are they?” She nodded to indicate the car.

“No. I looked. Anyway, chummy would take us while we got in and turned it.” 

“Maybe someone else will come along.”

“No chance. Wasn’t planned by an amateur. They’ll have road closed signs up at both ends.” Caine loaded the rifle.

“So what now?” she asked. Her mind was already racing. Only way to do it was draw the shooter out. They needed a dummy run for that. 

“Well, we could get out of here on foot,” Cain suggested. 

“Not carrying a live one, we couldn’t.”

“No. And that’s the point of the exercise.” Caine licked his lips. A nervous habit she too had adopted over the years of too many uncomfortable situations with too few options. He turned to her quickly, “How good are you with a rifle, tell me the truth.” 

“Good enough.”

“You better be.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I’m going for the front of our car door to draw his fire. With any luck you may get a glimpse of him.”

“No, I’ll go. If it’s sharpshooting you’re probably better than me.” 

Caine looked at her for a moment. She could see his eyes searching her face behind his glasses, which reflected the scraggly trees and the blue sky hanging empty and gaping above them. “Alright,” he said at last. 

They were in motion again, Caine sitting up and pulling the rifle across his chest. He rolled onto his knees and she was on her feet, darting out from behind the sedan and racing toward their own. She reached the door before she saw the shooter. She dropped to her knees, pointed her pistol and shot just as the man’s rifle rang out. Caine’s gun fired from behind her and she saw the man drop, unsure of whose bullet had caused him to do so. 

She searched for any more sign of movement. Behind her Caine climbed to his feet and was walking toward her, cradling the rifle. 

“Get the bodies out of sight,” he said at once, leaving no time to reflect on the past battle which had ended so abruptly. “I’ll move the car.” 

Jill looked up at him. Caine was staring up at the hillside. She wondered if he’d ordered her to move the bodies because he didn’t like the sight of shot up corpses.

“Right.”

* * *

“We’re alive, Willie,” Jill said when Caine climbed back beside her behind the wheel. He’d told her to let Angelos live, the man she’d knocked unconscious while retrieving the rifle. Had it been Jill making the decisions she would have pulled the trigger. One less man like Angelos in the world didn’t make a very big difference. Angelos was a coward. She could tell by the way he trembled under her and Caine’s guns, blood dripping down his nose from where she’d hit him on the forehead. 

The interrogation was fruitless, Angelos too afraid of this so-called Apollo to tell them anything. He’d been lying through his teeth. She recognized the desperate tone in his voice right away, over accented to give an impression of sincerity. Yet still Caine had allowed him to live. Clearly it had not been Caine’s first interrogation. She could tell by the way he dug the mouth of his pistol into the soft underside of Angelos’ chin. Still, Caine had not pushed hard enough. He had not carried through with his threats. 

_Leave him. There’s enough killing for one day_ Caine said and Angelos’ eyes followed them as they walked back down the hill to the car. 

“Yeah,” Caine swiped at the sweat on his forehead. “We’re alive.”

“If it bothers you that much, why do you do it?” The line between weakness and mercy was a thin one, maybe a nonexistent one. Willie Caine’s reputation preceded him, yet he seemed to her wholly unexpected. She was confused by the image he presented her with; she didn’t know if it was an image that commanded respect or scorn, if his mercy was to be disdained or esteemed. 

She could not deny that he kept a level head in a gunfight. To have such a partner was invaluable. It didn’t matter what side he was on, as long as he was shooting at the same people she was shooting at. 

Caine looked at her, fishing in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes. “It’s not always like this, you know. Can’t remember the last time I killed a man.” 

She could. Turkmenistan, not two months ago, a currier who got involved in something he didn’t understand. At least it hadn’t been her to kill the real Jillian Ferris, a small girl with dark hair, faced with a test she didn’t expect only to find she wasn’t quite up to scratch yet. She never would have lasted in a gunfight like this one. 

Shit. 

Jill took a deep breath and attempted to adjust a look of remorse on her face, “I’d never killed a man at all.”

“Just make sure you don’t get to like it,” Caine said around his cigarette 

Jill remembered her first time. She had been sick then, she recalled, violently ill in the dead of night after dreaming up his face again. She’d been warned it would get easier with time. It had. 

“Is there a danger of that?”

Caine shook his head. “Not for me.” He started the car. “Not ever.”

They were silent on the way back to the hotel. Jill did not ask Caine why he didn’t push on with the operation. Jillian Ferris would have been too quelled by the recent gunfight to waste energy on curiosity. 

She’d already made too many near mistakes. First recognizing Caine at the airport. Then, at the hotel – when Hugh Douglas had unexpectedly knocked at the door – Jill had moved without thinking, getting off the bed and sliding out of sight of the door. It was standard procedure not to let a possible enemy know your numbers upon coming into unfamiliar terrain. Better they see Caine first and not know she was there yet. She didn’t pause to consider this may not have been standard procedure at SIS field school. 

And now this. She hoped she had not outperformed herself and given Caine reason to suspect her. She didn’t think so. The atmosphere between she and Caine did seem to have altered, but she thought it must have been because she’d impressed him, not because of any incredulity on his part. In fact, he seemed to have finally decided they were on the same side.

* * *

The hotel was economical yet comfortable. At least the British seemed not unlike the Soviet Union in their ideas about spoiling agents. The Americans on the other hand – but it wasn’t as though a capitalist nation could be expected to be very responsible about money. 

She and Caine didn’t have time to change before Hugh Douglas asked for a briefing. Caine muttered something about needing a drink and Jill told him she’d meet him back in his room. She barely freshened up. Her hair was stiff from dried sweat. She tried to get rid of the worst of dust and grass stains on her slacks but found her efforts fruitless. 

Douglas was already in Caine’s room when she returned. Caine was standing, tense and coiled, pouring himself a whisky, and in the middle of recounting the afternoon’s events to Douglas. 

“Want one?” he asked her when she came in. 

“Thanks, no,” Jill answered.

“Burnside turning all you agents in London away from drink, is he?” said Douglas. 

“Not this one,” said Caine. He took a sip of his whiskey, grimaced, and took another. The atmosphere felt brittle and sharp. Caine appeared impatient. She could not blame him. She knew the tension well: an aftershock from the realization she could have been killed, gunshots still muffling her eardrums, the heavy feeling in her limbs after excess adrenaline drained away. Caine was exhausted, so was she, and Douglas was both incompetent and unsympathetic.

Jill sat in a chair against the wall, across from Douglas. 

“Yes, but who is Apollo?” Caine demanded when Douglas merely shrugged at the first mention of the name. 

“It’s a code name for one of the top men in the National Front,” Douglas answered. 

“Go on.” 

“Well, there’s no description of him, no ideas on his real identity. He’s been around since the Limassol police station raid in 1970. I can’t even buy information about him.”

“Hugh, if we don’t get a lead soon, we’re going to be in very big trouble.”

“But we don’t know where to look,” Douglas objected rather passively. 

It was maddening for Jill to sit there in the corner and say nothing, worse to be expected just to watch and listen, get a feel for a situation she probably had a better grasp on than either of these men. She sat forward and braced her elbows on her thighs. “How big is this island?” 

“It’s 140 miles long, and about 60 miles wide,” Douglas answered, speaking across Caine who paced back and forth between them. Caine was never long off his feet, she noticed, obviously more comfortable when in motion then when sitting still. He needed to reserve his energy – or else work off some of the excess. Maybe he needed a good screw. 

She sure as hell did. 

She said to Caine’s questioning face, “And somewhere on it there’s a factory capable of building missiles.” 

“Yes, but,” Caine interrupted, “it won’t look like a factory. It’s too easy to check those out one by one.”

“It could be anywhere,” said Douglas. 

“It _couldn’t_ be anywhere,” Caine snapped. “It wouldn’t be in the Turkish military area, would it?” Caine finally sat, folded into a chair and looked defeated and frustrated. His drink dangled in his hands between his legs. “But it’s got to be somewhere reasonably close to it.” 

“If you have your factory on the edge of the missile sights there’s less chance of discovery when you ferry them out,” said Jill. She and Caine were building on something again. She searched his face for his thoughts, feeling as in tune with him as she had back in the mountain pass. 

“The sights?” said Douglas. 

“They’re on the north facing slopes of the Troodos Mountains,” said Caine, a hand on his forehead, “to squirt down on Kyrenia.”

“It’s a lot of guess work.” Douglas shrugged, looking unconvinced. 

“It’s a start,” Caine replied sharply, saying the things Jill yearned to. “One that you should have made days ago.” 

“Right, I’ll get out the maps,” said Douglas and stood, apparently unaffected by Caine’s criticism. 

“Alright, I’ll come with you,” said Caine. He followed Douglas toward the door. “I want to phone Burnside.”

“Anything I can do?” Jill stood. Caine turned to look at her. His eyes gripped and searched her face. Jill cocked an eyebrow, “I know. Concentrate on staying alive.”

Caine frowned and looked away. “Yeah.”

* * *

“Sorry I was a bit sharp earlier,” said Caine, standing in her doorway. He was grinning. It was a nice smile, a bit of a cheeky smirk. 

Jill matched it and replied, “Not to worry, Willie. We were all a bit tense.” 

“Even so,” Caine continued, “I’ve ordered up supper and wine. I’d be very pleased if you joined me.”

“I’m hardly dressed for dinner,” she answered with a wry smile, running a hand down her dusty dungarees. 

“Don’t worry,” said Caine. “You’re still a damn sight better than Douglas.” 

“Thanks,” Jill drawled. “Not sure to take that as an insult or a compliment.”

“It was meant as a compliment.”

“Well, in that case,” said Jill, going into the hallway with him, “something to eat sounds very nice. I didn’t know how much getting shot at improved your appetite.” 

Caine obliged her with a chuckle. They walked abreast down the hallway. The British SIS must have been incompetent if they couldn’t even manage to get their agents adjoining rooms. 

“You alright?” Jill nudged him with her elbow. They were supposed to have worked up a comfortable comradery by now; it wouldn’t do for Jill to let it fall away for neglect. 

Caine sighed, “It’s just that I can’t erase the feeling that we’re running into this blind.”

“What did Burnside say back home?” 

“Stay the course,” said Caine. “They haven’t got any bright ideas, either.” They reached Caine’s room. He held the door for her on the way in. 

“So, what’s your man Burnside really like?” Jill asked. 

Caine coughed a humorless laugh. “Want the truth or lies?” 

“Is there such a thing as truth?” said Jill. “I think they’re all just glorified lies, told so many times people just start to believe them.” 

She didn’t have time to waste gathering any intelligence she could. She could never be sure when her opportunities would run out. KGB already knew plenty about Neil Burnside: his favorite strategies, agents, and patterns to his operations. 

The source was called Keeper, nestled snugly inside SIS London headquarters since the early seventies, but that was all Jill knew for sure about him. Keeper was a bit of a legend in KGB circles, boasted about to new recruits as both propaganda and intimidation factor. Rumors swirled around him, obstructing any truth of his identity. It was said he was the head of SIS, himself, but Jill knew better than to believe it. 

Still, any bit of information she could gather, any insignificant details not strictly of operational value, the kind of information Keeper could not give them: personalities, private lives, gossip, the inner workings and secret feelings and resentments of SIS operatives that could only be gleaned from one who lived and worked there every day – someone like Willie Caine – could be invaluable. 

The table was already set. Caine stepped over and sat down in one of the two chairs. Jill was glad he didn’t hold her chair for her. Too much chivalry set her on edge. 

“Yeah, well, Burnside’s a damn fine Operations Director,” said Caine. “I wouldn’t rather anyone else have my back on an operation like this. Truth is, he’s also a right bastard.” He smiled again and Jill smiled along with him. He had a nice sense of humor when not hassled and stressed. “Which is not to say I don’t like him. I’ve worked with him a long time, nearly since I got into the game. Ties like that are hard to break, no matter what minor personality flaws.”

“So you trust him?” said Jill. 

“With my life,” said Caine. “And he’s gotten me out of plenty of tight spots to prove it.”

Caine snatched the bottle of wine sitting in the center of the table and tugged it open with a corkscrew. Jill lifted her glass so he could fill it. “Thanks.”

“Sorry,” said Caine after he poured her glass and filled his own. “I know it should be long dresses and candlelight but I’m a bit nervous about eating in public places these days.”

“Tell you one thing,” Jill replied. “There’d be a lot of debate of who sat with who’s back to the door.” 

She took a sip of her wine. Caine did the same across from her. “Anyway, it’s a nice change from having only bottled wine for company,” he said. 

It was a lonely life. She knew better than anyone. Her last lover, a boy named Kurt, had called her cold. She was not cold. The world was cold, and cruel, and she survived. There was no place for warmth in work like hers. 

“Why aren’t you married?” she asked Caine over her dinner plate. 

“Nobody’s ever asked me,” Caine smiled. 

“Would you like to be?”

“Sometimes…when I’m on my own in a flat. After that mountain road today it’s just as well I’m not.”

“It frightened me too,” said Jill around her fork. 

“Well, it’s not so much the fear.” Cain shrugged. “You can get just as frightened driving down the motorway.” 

“The violence?” Again with the guns. She couldn’t figure Caine out. She wondered if he was playing her, dangling her on a string, or if this was the real Willie Caine before her. She could never be sure. Their lives were covered with a film of lies so thick it was an armor, and impossible to completely sweep away. Usually the uncertainty of a chase intrigued her, kept her around for the next one, but in this case she found herself frustrated by the lack of clarity in the situation – in whatever this was between her and Caine, an SIS and KGB officer having dinner and wine in a hotel room. 

“I suppose so, yeah,” Caine answered her. “It happens so rarely nowadays I suppose I always try to kid myself it won’t happen again and of course it will.” 

“It’s a violent world, Willie. Hijackings, kidnaps, bombings, assassinations, sometimes there’s no other answer.” 

“Maybe it’s that that gets to me.” Caine shook his head. “The inevitability of it. And the fact that these things seem to go in cycles.” 

“In what way?” 

“Well, we had three and half years without losing a Sandbagger. And in the last month we’ve lost two. That’s two out of three.” 

If it was his mortality that scared him, then she could understand that. In this business, one had to become friends with Death. Or, if Death wasn’t friendly enough, then at least one of his agent’s. She cupped her hand over the back of Caine’s fist on the table. 

“We’ll make it,” she told him, and in that moment hoped to God she was telling the truth. 

“I’m glad you’re around,” he told her, turning his hand under hers so their fingers could fold together. 

“So am I.”

They moved from the table to the chairs they sat in before with Douglas. Jill didn’t know how long she was invited to stay, whether it was an open invitation for the night, or whether she would take him up on it if it was. It would be a tricky thing to report back home. 

“So what about you?” He asked her, crossing his legs in a chair. “Why hasn’t a pretty girl like you settled down with a husband working in insurance bonds and a couple miniature Jill Ferrises running amok in the yard?”

“I guess I never had the time,” said Jill, smiling, wondering what the real Jillian Ferris thought about it. A lot more than just a person died when someone was killed: their memories, dreams, and beliefs were lost, too. “There wasn’t room for both lives. I had to choose.” 

Caine sighed. “Sometimes it feels more like a prison then a job.” 

“Well, at least it pays the bills,” said Jill. 

Caine shook his head, a wry smile wrinkling the corner of his mouth, “Sometime not even that.” 

Silence fell, a kind of companionable silence Jill was not accustomed to. Usually silences held heaviness or tension, belonged to waiting or were kneaded into deceit and mistrust. 

“What time will Douglas be here in the morning?” said Jill. 

“About eight. With answers on all the places I picked out on the map.”

“You hope.”

“Mmm. If we don’t make a move soon Burnside’s going to think we’re on our honeymoon.” Caine’s eyes glinted teasingly and Jill knew that it wasn’t going to happen tonight. Maybe some other night, but not tonight. Maybe in another lifetime. 

“That’s a nice thought to sleep on,” she stood to leave. 

“My doctor said I mustn’t get excited,” Caine quipped. 

Passing Caine on her way to the door, she laid a hand on his shoulder, and then bent to place her lips on his forehead. She didn’t know why she kissed him. 

“Goodnight, Willie.”

His eyes followed her out the door. “Goodnight.”

* * *

 _Tell Burnside I don’t fancy taking on the National Front with two guns._ Caine’s departing words to Douglas took on an ominous tone now, huddled in the brush as Jill and he were, surveying the foreboding fortress ahead of them. They left the car several miles back and had trudged in on foot. They were taking no chances in replicating the mountain pass episode of the day before. The structure was surrounded by a fence. Too many guards for a sanatorium, even one for the offspring of rich families and two-hundred quid a week. 

“That’s some hospital,” said Caine. He peered through binoculars, propped on his elbows. “More like a concentration camp.” 

“Top of the fence is electrified?”

“Electric fencing. Floodlights.” Caine handed her the binoculars and she took a look, training her eyes on two guards mulling around the gates. Caine was warm lying next to her. 

Concentrate, dammit. 

“Well, never heard of a place that size being surrounded by two people,” she said. “And if we can see, say, six guards in the daytime –”

“Triple the number you just thought of,” Caine warned. 

“What we need now is a glimpse of Colby or Yegorov.” 

“We could wait a week for that. They know we’re around. And if they don’t show either engineer –”

She half-listened to him as she continued to scan the area for guards. She paused at a vaguely familiar figure walking across the compound. “Willie, over there to the left.” She handed him the glasses. “An old friend.”

“Angelos.” 

“And if Angelos is there…” She let her voice hang. 

“Right,” said Caine. “We have to get to a phone and call Douglas. He can confirm it to London.”

She looked at him and grinned, “You’re a clever boy, Willie Caine.” 

“You think so? I was praying it was going to be the wrong place.”

* * *

Caine paced in the narrow strip between the two beds in the hotel room, as far as he could go with the chord of the phone tugging with each turn. 

“Right…whatever you say, boss.” 

Caine’s face grew grimmer by the second and Jill knew that whatever Burnside was saying on the other end of the line could not be good news. Jill watched him from where she leaned against the wall, hands pinned behind her back. Her hair was wet around her ears. She’d taken a cold shower after she and Caine arrived back from the sanatorium. She needed to be fresh and alert for the night. 

“Not for a lack of trying, I know. Thanks.” Caine hung up the phone with a click. His back was to her, bent over the night table. “Damn.” 

“We’re on?” Jill guessed. 

“Departure at twenty-two hundred.”

“It could only be expected,” said Jill. 

“Burnside tried his damnedest,” said Caine. “They refused armed reinforcements. Can’t rustle us up any action backup, not even from the CIA. The powers-that-be want to avoid an international incident. As if two SIS operations officers killed by the National Front won’t be incident enough.” 

“And a special projects team?” said Jill. 

“No go. Considered military support.” 

“What about Sandbagger Two?” The appointment of Laura Dickens had taken the KGB by storm. A woman working as a Special Operations Officer was tantamount to appointing a female premier. Outside the crop of girls bred for honey traps, female agents in the KGB were rare and often overlooked. Rising through the ranks often involved mixed portions of extortion and blackmail. Jill had done things with her body she was not proud of, but now held those memories like a blade to the throat of those who could continue to guarantee her success in the service. Yet it was a double-edged blade, and she had to be wary lest she press too hard on anyone’s jugular only to find it was her own. 

“Burnside can’t risk both of us,” Caine answered. He shook his head. “Nope, Burnside needed a feasible solution, and you and I are it, kid.” 

Jill didn’t say anything. Her mind was already moving forward. A night strike meant blackout powder for their faces, and dark clothes. They’d need guns, as many as they could get their hands on. Hopefully Douglas didn’t show himself incompetent this time around. 

“Knew Laura Dickens, did you?” said Caine. 

The question took Jill off-guard. Did she? Did Jillian Ferris know Laura Dickins?

“Not well. I didn’t know anyone very well. I kept to myself.”

“So did Laura, apparently. I guess that’s how we like them,” said Caine and he sounded cynical. 

Caine sat on the end of one of the beds and flopped over on his back. He cupped his hands under his head, elbows splayed in a diamond. 

Every agent had their own way of burning off steam before a mission, personal to their way of work and life. It was a time to gather their thoughts and reserve strength. It was an intimate time, a place available only to a privileged few. It was hard to keep up a façade in such times. Caine, belly up on the bed, chest rising and falling with each breath, was bearing his soul to her and Jill didn’t know what she was supposed to do with it. 

She’d have liked to make love to him now, if only they had more time. 

“Guess we’d better start planning,” she said. 

“Yep,” but Caine didn’t make a move to get up. What was he thinking about, Jill wondered. Was he remembering the mountain pass, weighing his chances of survival with her by his side once again under gunfire? 

Trust was a rare commodity, and one all the more desperately needed for its scarcity. She trusted Willie Caine, Jill realized now. She was glad she did, and wished he could trust her. Only she would ever truly know the irony of their situation: the KGB planning a joint operation with the SIS, contemplating sex and trust in a hotel room, preparing to face death in the dark. Even enemies looked like friends, backlit by that kind of future. 

Jill took a step forward before she knew what she was doing and perched on the bed. Her knee brushed against Caine’s thigh. He sat up beside her. 

“Alright.” He sounded determined. “Let’s get started.” He stood from the bed and went again to the phone, this time to call Douglas about getting them supplies. Jill was left alone on the bed, and the moment was lost.

* * *

Jill cradled the automatics in her lap as the car bumped along in the dark. She couldn’t help but notice they were rather archaic models. The Kremlin was always going on about how out of date SIS was. Jill wondered now if there wasn’t a bit of truth in their gossip. 

Caine pulled the car into park and reached over for his gun. 

“I think Douglas must have raided a war museum for these,” he said, indicating the gun. It was the first words spoken during the entire ride. They weren’t going to waste breath on idle chatter, not now when their breaths might be numbered. He opened his door and got out, peaking his head back inside, “You can stay here if you want to.”

It couldn’t have been a serious offer, but maybe Caine wanted it to be. Jill was glad he might be concerned for her safety, but, at this point, concern for the operation was more important. “I get afraid in the dark.”

She got out of the car and joined Caine in the night air. The heat and dust of the day had settled into a damp coolness. 

“Be just like Douglas to find the only honest power station working in Cyprus,” Caine whispered across the dark as they moved forward, back through the brush and undergrowth, approaching the sanitarium from the place they’d surveyed it the night before. 

“Someone offered me two-thousand pounds I’d throw the switch for ten minutes,” she replied. The conversation was a comfort now. It was nice to know she’d be fighting side by side with someone who thought she was friend. “When those lights go out they’ll know it’s us.”

“They won’t be sure,” said Caine. 

They waited a space of a second. They hadn’t given themselves much time to get into position. There was no room for error. Jill didn’t expect to need it. 

The light went out. 

Caine hissed, “Now,” and the two of them shot across the darkness toward the gate before confusion could break out among the guards. 

Caine gave her a lift onto the fence and she paid special attention to getting over the barbed wire at the top without snagging herself before dropping to the ground on the other side. She paused to get a bearing on her surroundings. No guards in sight. Her gun was slung over her back and she dashed over to the gates to release them for Willie. 

“That’s the ambulance,” Jill jammed her thumb over her shoulder to the garage that hid the ambulance within. 

“Okay, check it.”

Jill left Caine at the gates. The ambulance sat alone in the darkness. The door was unlocked and she slipped inside to check the ignition. She heard footsteps on the other side of the door and waited until she could see the guard’s silhouette through the window before she kicked open the door, hitting the guard across the chest. She jumped out of the seat and brought her toe into his ribs before he could get up from the ground. She slammed her fist into his face. He grunted once then went unconscious. It would be better to kill him but she thought she’d hit him hard enough to keep him out of commission. She took his gun before rejoining Caine by the gate. 

Caine hadn’t heard the struggle. 

“Keys are in. It’ll be fine,” she said about the ambulance.

“Right. Stage two.” Willie took off across the darkness and she followed, winding around corners of buildings and dodging across open roadways.

Approaching footsteps crunched behind them and they paused with their backs against the wall. The guard rounded the corner and Caine reached out, grabbed the guard by the arm, and swung him against the wall, arm around his throat. “Where are the engineers?” Caine demanded. “Colby, Yegorov. Engineers.”

Jill asked the guard the same thing in Greek, speaking calmly. She’d always been told her enunciation was flat.

The guard said nothing. She took her knife and buried it in his chest. She felt something warm and wet touch the back of her fist and she withdrew her blade. Caine let the dead man drop and bent to retrieve his gun before setting off again. 

There was more commotion in the camp now, shouts in the distance and footsteps on the gravel roads. Their infiltration had not yet been detected, but guards had obviously been sent out to investigate why the lights were still out. Jill and Caine waited, one on each side of a doorway, for two guards to emerge. 

Together they sprang into action, each seizing a guard from behind. Jill snaked her arm around her guard’s neck, feeling his pulse jump beneath her forearm. She could hear Caine ask his man, “Where is Colby?”

She struggled to pin the guard down, thrashing against his struggling limps. She tossed him against the wall and caught a glimpse of his face in the poor lighting. She called to Cain, “Okay, Willie, mine will do.”

Caine’s man stopped struggling. A moment later Caine was standing behind her in the dark. She wondered if Caine had killed his man. She doubted it. 

“This time you’ll tell us the truth,” said Caine. “Where are the engineers?”

“Over there.” Angelos tried to move his head. Jill tightened her grip. His breathing was quick in her ears. His eyes bulged. “The room. Over there.”

“If you’re lying –” Caine warned. 

“I swear it!”

“Okay,” said Caine after a pause. 

Jill stuck the knife, still wet with the first guard’s blood, into Angelos’ spine. She released her grip on his slumping body, letting him fall to the dirt. 

“Stage three?” she said to Caine. It didn’t matter if he knew how casually she could kill. It was all going to end tonight, one way or the other, and there wasn’t any point in keeping up the farce. She had already decided she wasn’t going to stay in Cyprus. She’d taken too many risks, gambled too much. It was a miracle she had managed to get even this far. She was going to get Yegorov and then get out. 

“Yeah,” said Caine, not looking at the body lying on the ground between them.

“How much time we got?”

“Not enough.”

“Then I’ll get on with it.” She retraced her steps back through the darkness, leaving Caine to retrieve the engineers, as was the plan. There was a guard trying to relock the gate. She took him out with a swift hit to the side of the head, opened the gate and continued. She reached the ambulance, white in the darkness and climbed back behind the wheel. The engine started immediately, with one twist of the keys in the ignition. The motor grumbled. She wheeled it onto the road, knowing the noise would summon guards. There was very little time now. 

Gunshots popped somewhere near at hand, in the direction Caine had run. She barreled the ambulance toward an onslaught of guards spilling from one of the buildings. They dived out of the way, shouting. 

She heard the rattle of a machine gun and knew it must be Caine. She turned the ambulance around and drove back where Angelos had said the engineers were. A crack of interior light opened from one of the buildings in front of her. The light was extinguished but she could still see three dark figures emerge against the white wall. A gunshot snapped through the air. One of the figures fell against the wall. It was the figure in the lead and immediately she knew it had to be Caine. 

She stuck her gun out of her window and fired at the guards in the dark. The other guns went quiet as her bullets found marks. In the brief, unexpected silence she could hear crickets. 

Caine was still on his feet. She pulled the ambulance to a stop and got out of the front door. She rushed toward Caine with her head down. 

“Is it bad?” 

“No,” said the Englishman with his hand on Caine’s arm. He must have been Colby. She recognized Yegorov even in the dark. “It’s just a shoulder wound. It’s more shock, I think, then anything.”

“Get in the ambulance,” she said, gripping Caine’s other arm. She felt warm liquid on his wool sleeve. “Come on. The police will be here in a minute.” 

She put the two scientists in the back and slammed the door after them. Caine was in the passenger seat. He stuck his gun out the window, looking for more guards. She wondered how much he was acting purely on instinct, pain pushed back behind thudding adrenaline. 

She climbed back behind the wheel and started off again at once. Caine’s gun went off three times, then stopped. There were no more guards. Where had they gone? Waiting to sabotage them at the gate? Or had they been convinced by the level of commotion Jill and Caine had raised that their outpost was surrounded? Had the rest of them fled the scene, more concerned with saving their own skin then upholding any honor for the National Front? 

“Root around for a bandage or something, Professor,” Jill said through gritted teeth as the ambulance clattered through the gates and onto the road, driving off into the woods and out of danger. “Something to wrap his arm in.”

Caine dragged his gun back into the car. He groaned and lay his head against the headrest. “I’m alright,” he said. He sounded gruff and snappish. He wasn’t alright, of course. He was in pain and scared out of his mind, just as she was. But the both of them needed to keep a level head for only a moment longer. 

“How bad is it?” she said to Caine, not trusting Colby’s word. 

“I’ll live,” Caine said on an exhale. 

Jill was ashamed to realize just how much she hoped it was true. Colby passed a bandage up from the back. Thankfully, despite not being a real hospital, at least the ambulance seemed stocked with real medical supplies. Colby helped Caine tie a sloppy bandage around his shoulder and Jill kept her eyes on the road. She took one hand off the wheel and squeezed Caine’s thigh. He found the back of her fist with his hand. 

They’d done it. God, they’d done it. 

She drove along in the dark until they came up behind Caine’s car, hidden in the brush on the side of the road. She pulled the ambulance into park and leapt out of the door before Colby or Yegorov could get out of the back. 

Yegorov was strangely silent. She knew it was more than him not speaking English. There was no possible way he could know who she was, but he was still trying to keep a low profile. Colby came out of the car and around to the passenger side to help Caine out. Jill hung back, hands on her gun and eye on Yegorov as he climbed out of the back. 

Colby supported Caine to the waiting car. Jill followed, angling her body to keep Yegorov walking in front of her. He wasn’t going to get away now, not when he’d already caused so much trouble. 

“You can drive a car?” she asked Colby. She didn’t bother to sound sympathetic. There was no point to keep up a charade. It was the end of the road. She was leaving and the truth would come out. She thought Caine wouldn’t put up a fight as long as she didn’t. 

“Yes,” said Colby, and she remembered he was a missile engineer. Not bright enough to keep himself from getting kidnapped, though. 

“Make sure you’re not stopped. You couldn’t explain your cargo.” 

Jill put her hand on Caine’s door and he looked up at her. His face was pale and strained under the blackout powder. 

He sounded tired when he told her, “It’s a long way off to Moscow. Off you go.”

She waited for the surprise to register but then realized that it wasn’t going to. Willie Caine was a damn good agent. There wasn’t anything to be surprised about there. 

“How long had you known?” she asked him. 

“Almost from the beginning.” She knew he meant from the gunfight in the mountain pass. Damn. She knew she hadn’t fooled him. “It’s in the eyes, you can’t hide it.”

“I’m taking Yegorov,” she said. 

Caine broke eye contact and looked straight ahead. She wondered if he couldn’t bear the sight of her any longer. “You’re holding the guns.” 

“Those are my orders.” She didn’t know why she felt like she needed to explain. She wanted him to understand. But she didn’t owe him any excuses, especially not when he already knew about damned orders. “He wasn’t snatched out of Syria. He sold himself to Apollo. And he’d work willingly for the West.”

Caine looked at her again. She clenched her teeth. 

“I don’t know,” said Colby unhelpfully. He wasn’t part of this. “I mean, he wasn’t a prisoner.”

“But we are,” said Caine. Jill knew he wasn’t referring to Colby and himself. His hand closed around hers. “Prisoners.”

“They wouldn’t understand it, would they?” It hurt her in that moment that he would forever know her by a dead girl’s name. 

“No,” Caine shook his head. “They wouldn’t understand.” He let go of her hand and she let her arm fall away from the door to her side. “Well, off we go.” Caine said to Colby and the engine coughed to life. The car rolled away, taillights bleeding red into the dust kicked up behind its wheels. 

It was almost a disappointment to realize he’d been playing her for nearly as long as she’d been playing him. She would have liked to keep believing that at least the way Caine had acted toward her had been genuine, even if she couldn’t promise the same thing to him. She wondered, if he’d known all along, why he gave her the information he did – about Burnside being a bastard, Laura Dickens a loner, and even his abhorrence to violence. He’d seemed so earnest. Of course, she couldn’t trust any of it now, not knowing he could have been purposely misleading her. She could certainly never report it to her superiors in any seriousness. 

Some things about this operation she’d never tell her superiors. 

Willie Caine was a man of contradictions: a special agent who disliked guns, a spy who survived on deception but couldn’t lie with a straight face, a self-depreciative investigator who knew more about finding people who didn’t want to be found than nearly any agent she’d ever worked with. His bearing was one less of false modesty and more of genuine assurance at what he could do and what he could do well, moreover what he could not do and what he must do regardless, despite reluctance or lack of talent.

The line between weakness and mercy may have been a thin one, but it was a line nonetheless and one Caine had learned to deftly walk. At first Jill had taken his hesitancy toward violence as a waste of a good operations man, but now she found herself strangely admiring it. She’d gone into the operation respecting Caine’s reputation but she hadn’t expected herself to come out of it liking the man. 

She watched the bumper of Caine’s car dissolve into the distance. She turned to Yegorov and spoke in Russian. “Turn around please, Professor, and shut your eyes.” 

Afterwards, having disposed of the weapon and the body, all she could think about was how much Willie didn’t like guns.

* * *

End.


End file.
